Hofstra Drama 20 – Sound for the Theatre

1:  Saturday, March 1, 2013, 1:17 am, Social Sports Kitchen, The Gallery Room

2:  Identify and list the sounds farthest away from you.

I am sitting in the coat check of the basement level of Social Sports Kitchen, counting the cash accrued from checking 87 hoodies, parkas, blazers and peacoats during the Saturday night mob scene.  The door to the walk-in-closet-turned-coat-check is hinged in two separate halves, so that I can partition myself from the bedlam of mass, collegiate inebriation like I’m taking orders at a drive-through window.  Being set apart from the nucleus of pulsating sounds that is the dance floor means that I am spared certain hearing loss by the walls around me.  I have never heard the music played so loudly at the bar before.  Even with the sound cushion of my partial seclusion, the amplitude of the music feels like it’s battering my eardrums.

3:  Identify and list the sounds at a medium range from you.

Flocks of girls occasionally clomp unevenly past my window, one complaining loudly to the others about her heels or her sorority sister or some other bane of her existence.  I usually can only hear the women that pass because they speak in higher pitch tones that can be heard over the bass-heavy roar of the music.  The men’s voices just become vague, mellow inflections wavering somewhere in the less intelligible levels of the soundscape.

4: Identify and list the sounds closest to you (– you can include internal sounds if noticed or relevant).

I literally cannot hear anything inside the coat check.  The noise of the party is so all-encompassing that the little sounds of metal coat hangers sliding against the metal of the rod and pen on paper as I tally the ticket stubs are indiscernible.  Only once in five hours does the music stop (due to a computer problem), and I can hear the swishing sound of paper money as I bank-face my tips.  Even that is almost unnoticeable to me, however, as the ringing in my ears is so strong.

5: Describe the general sound level and amount of sound activity.

The sound level is remarkably high, to the point of discomfort.  I’m always the girl chided for listening to music too loudly through my headphones, yet I can barely handle the sound pressure.  The cement floor seems to move with the bassline, as if car bombs are going off outside.

6: Assign a one-word description to the “sound environment”.

“Aggressive”

7: Select and list 3 sounds that are essential to the sound environment. Note: you need to try and figure out what sounds make up this environment and which of those sounds need to be there for the feeling of the environment to stay intact.

The only really pertinent sound is that of the music.  Overly loud dance music in a nightclub has such a signature sound – wide, fuzzy, and mind-numbingly percussive.  The occasional snippets of shouted conversation as people move from the bathroom to the dance floor can also help build this particular sonic atmosphere.